The Bob Sheppard Quartet – 6/16/10

Last Wednesday, June 16^th, the Farrell Family Jazz at the Athenaeum Series brought us the Bob Sheppard Quartet, a group that comprises some of Los Angeles’s most prominent jazz musicians.

First, some housekeeping:

The Bob Sheppard Quartet:

Bob Sheppard: Multi-reeds

Larry Koonse: Guitar

Darek Oles: Bass

Mark Ferber: Drums

Set List:

1^st half:

1. A Sheppard arrangement of Irving Berlin’s “How Deep is the Ocean” that exploited Koonse’s guitar as both a melodic voice and a chordal instrument.
2. A slow, brooding rendition of Kenny Barron’s “Phantoms.” So good that an audience member yelled “play it again!” after the song ended.
3. The standard “I Fall in Love Too Easily;” Sheppard played an extended solo intro on tenor sax, and then switched to soprano to close out the song.
4. An original Sheppard composition entitled “Bait and Switch” from his latest record, “In the Now.” Sheppard seemed especially comfortable with this tune, and he really cut loose during his solo.

2^nd half:

1. Thad Jones’s “Three in One.” Sheppard explained that Jones’s Big Band, which he regularly heard at the Village Vanguard, inspired him to play sax.
2. A new song written by Sheppard called “Surface Tension,” which will be available on the saxophonist’s forthcoming album. It was the first time the song had been played in public!
3. A slow, smoldering, bluesy John Scofield tune that Sheppard didn’t name.
4. The classic Duke Ellington ballad “Prelude to a Kiss.”
5. An uptempo version of “Lover Man,” another standard.  Sheppard jokingly dedicated this to the recently-married Oles.

The quartet played a spirited set to one of the more diverse crowds I’ve seen at the Athenaeum – I ran across a college-age friend I met at UCSD jazz camp and also saw several older couples mingling.  For the most part, the group played jazz standards and Sheppard’s original compositions; my friend and I kept hearing familiar chord changes during the latter.  I later found out that Sheppard based his original pieces around the traditional jazz forms, in order to free up soloing.

And free it was.  Soloing opportunities were evenly distributed among the four musicians, with an appropriate focus on Sheppard. The saxophonist’s tone on tenor was cutting and his lines were brash, and his dulcet soprano playing counterbalanced his tenor work. Mark Ferber was featured on several tunes, the most memorable being his almost march-like solo on Sheppard’s “Bait and Switch” to close out the first half. Darek Oles’s stunning technique and melodic sensibilities impressed me, and Larry Koonse’s textural, understated lines complemented the rest of the group nicely.

I was lucky enough to get to speak with the band after the show was over, and I got some interesting answers to my questions.  As a saxophone player, I couldn’t resist asking Sheppard what equipment he used to capture his Joe-Henderson-meets-John-Coltrane-esque tone. The answer? A rare, decades-old Dukoff “Stubby” Mouthpiece. When I asked the musicians what they thought was the most difficult aspect of playing tonight, they responded almost unanimously that they didn’t think about music in those terms.  Mark Ferber explained that instead of encountering surprises in the difficulty of the songs, he found surprises in the other players, whose spontaneity drove the performance.  A final question I asked Sheppard was where he got the inspiration for his piano-less quartet.  He replied that he saw guitar as “more open,” an escape from busy piano playing that can overpower an ensemble.

As I walked out, I heard Larry Koonse talking enthusiastically to the friends and staff who had stuck around: “The sound in here is really nice.”

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